Brutal cases aside, juvenile crime down in South Florida, figures show

The near-fatal burning this week of a 15-year-old, for which five other teens have been charged, is only the latest in South Florida's litany of ruthless juvenile crime.

In other underage cases:

June 2007: A gang of 10, mostly teens with the youngest 14, rape a woman and torture her 12-year-old son in Palm Beach County.

January 2008: A 12-year-old Lauderhill boy bludgeons his 17-month-old cousin to death with a baseball bat when she wouldn't stop crying.

September 2009: A Miami 17-year-old stabs a teenage classmate to death on the grounds of Coral Gables High School.

It would be understandable for people to think teen crime is becoming more frequent -- and more horrific.

Except that isn't the case.

"They think that there's an epidemic of juvenile violent crimes, and that's really not borne out by the numbers," said Maria Schneider, head of the juvenile division at the Broward State Attorney's Office. "It looks like things are going to heck, but that's not absolutely true."

Figures from the state Department of Juvenile Justice show that from fiscal year 2003-2004 to 2007-2008, the most recent data year available, youths charged with violent felonies dropped 7 percent statewide.

In Broward, the decrease was 2 percent; in Palm Beach County it was 12 percent; in Miami-Dade, 13 percent. The drop came despite a rise in population.

For example, in 1999 Broward had a population of 1.5 million, and about 13,000 juveniles were arrested. Last year, when Broward's population topped 1.7 million, only some 10,000 juveniles were arrested, according to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Experts credit better support programs for teens, a retreat from the zero-tolerance polices of the past, and a general drop in crime levels that includes teenage crime.

"I think that we've gotten better in Broward County at early intervention," Schneider said.

She cites the Children's Services Council as an example. The agency provides support for youthful mothers, parenting classes, child care, tutoring and summer and after school programs.

"For every dollar we spend through these programs, we're saving something like $20 in costs of detention and processing," the prosecutor said.

Michael J. Dale, a law professor at Nova Southeastern University who has been studying juvenile crime for 35 years, also said social programs are having an effect.

"There's no doubt that the police and the juvenile justice department of the state, and various community organizations, are a lot more sophisticated in terms of the programs they provide for kids than they used to be," he said.

Another factor, Dale said, is a departure from the zero-tolerance policies of the past, in which teens were summarily punished for any infraction, however minor. Now there's a movement toward more individualized judgment calls by police. Instead of automatic arrest, for example, an officer may turn the minor over to the wrath of a parent, as occurred in the 1950s.

"What zero tolerance did was throw large numbers of kids into the system," the professor said. "Those are likely to be the kids who do the serious crimes."But a judge decided prison is the appropriate place for the three young men who received life sentences this week for the Palm Beach County gang rape. "There is no realistic expectation of rehabilitation," prosecutor Aleathea McRoberts said.

Circuit Judge Krista Marx, in imposing sentence, said she sympathized with one defendant's difficult life, which included fatherlessness, poverty and drug addiction. But that didn't explain the youth's lack of a moral code, the judge said.

Nationally, since the mid-'90s, overall crime has dropped to levels not seen in decades. "Juvenile crime goes down also," Dale said.

But still, crimes like the intentional burning of Michael Brewer, 15, of Deerfield Beach, by what police say was a gang of four 15 year olds and a 13 year old, can give a false impression of youth gone rampantly wild.

"I don't think we can just focus on these really heinous cases," Schneider said. "They're the exception, they're not the rule."

Dale pointed out that seemingly well-adjusted juveniles are no different than adults: They can, without warning, commit the ghastliest of crimes.

"Occasionally, awful things happen," he said.

Robert Nolin can be reached at rnolin@SunSentinel.com or 954-356-4525.